44% of used phones contain sensitive data

In a recent study, researchers were able to garnish all kinds of sensitive data from second hand mobile devices. Of the units tested, 44% contained information such as salary details, bank account information, business plans, personal medical details, personal insults, and address book data. Next time you get a used device, take a good look around. You never know what you may find.

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11 thoughts on “44% of used phones contain sensitive data”

When I had my mobile in for repairs I got a temp phone. The previous owner hadn’t deleted anything from it. I resisted the temptation to check it all out for some time, but finally I was curious. This guy had SMSes to his live-in girlfriend as well as to other chicks he was making moves on. Good luck with that when your live-in snoops dude. Best of all I recognised one of the names and numbers in his contacts list. Turns out we’d both slept with the same chick.

That’s kind of obvious especially since the main reasons electronics are returned is because of cracked screens, broken keyboards, and other things vital in terms of navigating the screen.
Without a screen you can’t remove these things, With a broken keyboard it’s more of a chore to find a way around. So it just makes sense.

I had this happen to me once. The cell phone company took back my phone under warranty and said they had erased all the information after transferring it to a “refurbished” phone. That phone had the previous customer’s info on it. Including some “interesting” pictures.

About 5 years ago I set up a new account at sprint, took their cheap “free” phone (new), and set up the Vision thingus for sending pictures and such. Immediately I couldn’t log in to Vision, it seemed the password of the previous “owner” of my new phone number was still in place. After several go-rounds with tech support I finally got them to reset the password. Once I could log in I found several “interesting” pictures of the previous owner.

Fortunately for me, it was a she, and not an overly scary she either. Pics included “The Twins” (haha, original) and “shaved4U”.

Even more entertaining; for the next 8 months or so I still got calls and voicemails for the previous owner, Jessica. Including a few from her grandparents, “Jessica, why don’t you answer your phone? We haven’t seen you in months!”

I got a phone off ebay with phone numbers, picutres, and texts on it but nothing interesting. It was just obvious that it was previously owned by some hillbilly. I made quick work of it with the manufactures reset code. In reply to above: even with a cracked screen, one can enter the correct sequence of buttons to reset the phone to manufacture state. It takes minimal googling to find a reset code.